DR. JAMES G. KIERNAN, taking this topic for consideration, said that
maternal impressions have been considered from one standpoint only, and that
is as to their supposed cause and its method of action. As the supposed cause
is psychic and—in the conception of it usually adopted—immaterial
in action, an absurd credulity respecting its powers which existed at one
time among obstetricians has given way to an equally absurd skepticism. The
subject has not been discussed by either set of partisans, from a scientific
critical standpoint. At the January session of the Academy, the skeptical
spirit evinced itself in denial of facts authenticated by embryologists and
ornithologists of unblemished repute. The case was further supported by teratologic
specimens in the British Museum. Spitzka had his skepticism as to maternal
impressions shaken by these specimens, which were newly-hatched chicks with
a curved beak like a parrot and the toe set back as in that bird. The hens
in the yard where these monstrosities were hatched had been frightened by
a female parrot which, having escaped, fluttered among them before the eggs
were laid and greatly frightened the hens from whose eggs the malformed chicks
were hatched. This would seem at first sight to confirm the photographic theory
of maternal impressions. The fact is, however, that these malformations are
simply arrests of development. Birds, being aberrant reptiles, belonging to
the Sauropsidae. During their embryonic development
birds pass through a reptilian phase. It was at the end of this phase that
the chicks were arrested in development, producing parrot-like malformation.
It is precisely for lack of a logical explanation like this that modern obstetricians
are skeptical.